Posted on 05/12/2024 6:10:04 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Predictions that the U.S. and the world would run out of fossil fuels go back decades, and these predictions have so far turned out to be wrong. A new report shows the U.S. has 227 of oil, 130 years of gas, and 485 years of coal.
or years, activists argued for an energy transition away from fossil fuels because, they said, we were hitting “peak oil,” the point at which we can no longer produce oil because there’s little left in the ground or it’s too expensive to recover.
In 2023, the U.S. produced nearly 13 million barrels per day, more than any other nation in history. Predictions that the U.S. and the world would run out of oil go back decades, and these predictions have so far turned out to be wrong.
Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a free market think tank focusing on energy, told Just the News that anti-fossil fuel activists latched onto “peak oil” to push for alternatives, and with the U.S. leading the world’s production, their rhetoric has evolved.
“First, they said, ‘We don't have the resources. We're big consumers, but we don't have the energy. So we have to get off of the resource. Then it became evident and clear that that was not the case,” Pyle said.
Centuries of energy
In 2011, IER produced its first North American Energy Inventory.
“It was really for the purpose of shattering this myth of energy scarcity. To my knowledge, prior to that, nobody had taken the effort to compile, using government data …. the amount of energy that we have in North America,” Pyle said.
In that 2011 report, Pyle stated: “Thanks to new and continuing innovations in exploration and production technology, there’s every reason to believe that today’s estimates of reserves are only a fraction of what will be produced and delivered tomorrow.”
The statement turned out to be accurate. The Shale Revolution, which combined technologies in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, made available large deposits of previously unrecoverable oil throughout the U.S.
The IER’s 2024 North American Energy Inventory update shows that North America has 1.66 trillion barrels of technically recoverable resources, and at current rates of consumption, the report calculates that it would take 227 years to deplete it all.
File 2024NorthAmericanEnergyInventory.pdf IER 2024 North American Energy Inventory
“Technically recoverable resource” refers to oil and gas that can be produced based on current technology, and it doesn’t consider economic factors that might make it unprofitable under current technologies.
The 1.66 trillion barrels is 15% higher than the estimates from the 2011 report.
By the numbers
If all the oil in North America’s technically recoverable reserves was devoted exclusively to gasoline production, according to the report, the North American transportation sector would have enough energy for 539 years at 2023 usage rates.....
I wonder how much lithium there is.
Well, given that fusion power is perennially just 10 years away, we might be able to have it ready by then.
Our future gens need fossil fuels not for energy either.
for plastics, meds, fertilizers, paints, explosives etc.
It needs to be conserved.
This has been known for quite a long time, but the goal is to make the US poor. By making the US buy offshore oil, it pushed US dollars into the world market which does not fully come back to the US economy. If the US is oil independent, it keeps US dollars in the US, slowing the financial destruction of the US. Repeated in many industries that we were once “independent” in.
Is the United States still going to exist two centuries from now? Considering our current state of affairs I have my doubts.
We were running out so we needed to raise prices. Of course, we were not running out so they limited production capacity with limited refinery development for maximum profit.
Of course, the goooooooooooooberment gets its cut as well.
NOT buying their calculations
Good point.
Probably 1,000 years of coal as well.
Heard the same crap in the ‘70’s.
Ya ,Oil is created at the earth’s core as a byproduct and moves to the surface so it’s almost unlimited ,LOL
Some of the lithium is stolen by China.
When I visited Mongolia, my guide told me that the Chinese dig horizontal mine shafts from China in order to mine the Mongolian side of the mountain range that separates Mongolia and China. In this way, China is stealing Mongolian resources. And then they sell it to us. But the Mongolians who rightly own the resources get nothing.
These supplies can be extended by Bio-algae production and natural gas to butanol/hexanol synthesis.
Matter disassembly is the eventual future of energy. Fusing atoms together is a huge scam. The biggest problem is, without massive gravity, it requires temperatures that don't exist naturally outside of supernova explosions. Like other nuclear technologies, it's all over when the first reactor blows. The boffins know that, but want to run their scam as long as possible.
Remember when they trusted the science....”50 years of oil left” back in the 1970’s?
Trust the science, not the scientist.
God created the science. The first scientists were Adam and Eve experimenting.
Scientists are biased, ignorant, evil, or all 3.
Says a scientist.
“In 2023, the U.S. produced nearly 13 million barrels per day, more than any other nation in history.”
The American oil industry will do that for the foreseeable future.
And 10,000 years of energy supply from the thorium that can be extracted from coal.
We should be using hydrocarbons for more specialized purposes than simply burning them as an energy source.
This does not even count the oil that is not allowed to be drilled for. California sits on an ocean of oil as does Alaska and many states in the USA. Now about all the oil offshore. Add the natural gas and the fact that oil wells replenish.
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